Travelling with kids: Macau trip gives food for thought

Amid history, tourists and towers, one young traveller is more concerned with filling his stomach with egg tarts.

The streets are lined with colourful house fronts that look like they have been transplanted straight out of Lisbon. Photo by Christine Iyer for The National
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Macau is a city of astonishing contrasts – kitschy casinos sitting beside old ­European monuments – but our son is primarily there for the egg tarts. Calvin talks ad infinitum about the caramel-topped, custard-filled Portuguese delicacy on the hour-long ferry ride from Hong Kong (164 Hong Kong dollars [Dh78], one way), and in the end, my husband and I shut our eyes and pretend to be asleep.

Arriving at the Macau ferry terminal, we’re met by our Chinese guide, Kenny. He chatters incessantly during our entire six-hour excursion in his car (700 Macanese patacas [Dh321] for three people), casually sharing tips and trivia in a stream-of-consciousness fashion.

“Don’t get in the way of the tour groups, they’ll mow you down.”

“You could swim here from China, where the canal is the narrowest. But you must have a bribe ready for the police waiting on the banks.”

“In the olden days, rich men ate tigers for virility, but the poor had to make do with dogs.”

Calvin is wide-eyed as he takes in this last bit of information, and I make a mental note to pull ­Kenny aside later for a talk about age-appropriate ­conversation.

Because of the pressing nature of our son’s need for egg tarts, Kenny takes us first to the facade of São Paulo Cathedral, a sombre 17th-century hilltop ruin, and a Unesco World Heritage Site, that throws its spiky shadow across a wide swath of steps leading down to a tiny square. Here, Calvin joins the queue of tourists at the egg-tart stall outside Koi Kei Bakery, which is stuffy with the aroma of freshly made biscuits and noisy with the clamour of ­customers.

“If you walk around and taste all the samples, you don’t need to buy any,” says the thrifty Kenny, and throws me a look of disgust when I purchase a box of almond cookies. Calvin finally returns with a bag of 16 tarts (9 patacas [Dh4] each), and we carry on with our tour of the ­island.

We spend a quiet hour looking around Macau Museum (15 patacas [Dh7]) for a quick history lesson on the first 16th-century Portuguese settlement and the fall of the Qing Dynasty in the early 20th century. We go up the 338-metre ­Macau Tower (135 patacas [Dh62]) for wide-angle views across the cityscape.

We walk along streets lined with colourful house fronts that look like they have been transplanted straight out of Lisbon. And thanks to Kenny, we become adept at jumping out of the way of those aforementioned tour groups, who swarm around each attraction like an invading army.

It’s only on the ferry back to Hong Kong that we notice Calvin looking a little green-faced from his egg-tart binge.

“How many did you eat?” my husband asks him.

“Fifteen,” he groans.

“May I have the last one, then?” my husband ­enquires

“Actually,” says our son, clutching the bag tightly, “I’m saving it for breakfast tomorrow.”

artslife@thenational.ae